Computerization and especially Internet technology has been providing ever greater access to data, including financial data, medical data, personal data, and with means to expedite financial and other transactions in which confidential data is updated or exchanged.
Passwords are commonly used to maintain the confidentiality of such data; however, passwords are frequently based on a birth date or phone number that is simple to guess and that is not secure at all. Furthermore, even a complicated randomly generated password can often be readily stolen. Password-based data accessing systems are thus vulnerable to criminal attack with resultant risk and damage to industry and the economy and even to people's lives. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method for securing data and protecting that data from unauthorized access.
Biometric data can include precise details that are difficult to capture but easy to analyze (such as a sequence of fingerprint minutia) or overall patterns that are easy to capture but difficult to analyze (such as the spatial characteristics of adjacent fingerprint whorls).
Encryption algorithms exist that require a digital key available only to authorized users. Without the proper key, the encrypted data can be decrypted into a usable format only with a substantial investment of time and processing resources, and even then, only if certain characteristics of the unencrypted data are known (or at least are predictable).
Japan Published Patent Application JP 60-029868 dated Feb. 15, 1985 in the name of Tamio Saito teaches an individual identification system that employs an identity card with an integrated memory for registering enciphered biometric data obtained from the card holder. The biometric data may include a voiceprint, fingerprint, physical appearance, and/or a biological assay. In use, the data on the card is read and deciphered for comparison with corresponding data captured from the person presenting the card. Such a system permits a registered individual to be positively identified with a high degree of accuracy. However, because the biometric data is obtained and processed by external equipment, it is difficult to protect the information stored on the card against possible alteration and/or identity theft.
An improved identification card has been proposed which includes a data driven multi-processor chip on the card to provide a hardware firewall that both encrypts and isolates the biometric data stored on the card, thereby providing substantially greater protection against unauthorized alteration of the stored data. However, the actual matching process was performed in the same external reader terminal that captured the live biometric data, and was thus still potentially vulnerable to external fraudulent manipulation.